Some of Omaha’s troubled youths and their family have been getting help putting their lives back together through a Munroe-Meyer Institute (MMI) project.

The Wraparound Project reunites youngsters served in shelter care with their families through case management, direct intervention and in-home service provision.

The five-phase project, now in its final stages, was funded by a three-year, $450,000 "Project of National Significance" grant from the Administration on Developmental Disabilities and the Family and Youth Services Bureau. Principal investigator of the grant is Joseph Evans, Ph.D., associate professor and director of pediatric psychology at MMI.

Collaborating on this project were Deborah Reay, discipline director and MMI project coordinator; Elaine Phillips, training coordinator; and staff of the Youth Emergency Services (YES House). Supporting the efforts of the project were doctoral psychology student interns and social work graduate students who conducted psychological assessments, family therapy, parent training and in-home service provision.

A major goal of the project was to evaluate the number of youths in shelter care facilities who have "diagnosable disabilities" that may be interfering with their return home and their ability to optimally function successfully in the community.

"Before we began, I predicted that 20 percent of shelter kids had some disabling condition. Since we’ve done the project, we have found that it’s more like 39 percent," Dr. Evans said.

Diagnostic evaluations have been conducted on 446 youngsters since January 1996, an average of 3.5 per week. They were screened for mental retardation, learning disabilities, emotional problems (particularly depression), and drug and alcohol abuse or dependency.

Results of the screening showed that 214 children did not have any disabilities, but 144 had some form of disability and nine were borderline disabled. Disabilities included learning (90), cognitive (18) and drug and alcohol dependency (28). Among all the youngsters evaluated, 82 were found to be substance abusive or regular users of illegal drugs, but not yet addicted.

"The most surprising finding was that we found 82 youngsters who would meet criteria for clinical depression, based on our screening," he said.

Youngsters in the project were between the ages of 12 and 18 and were residents of two shelters operated by the Youth Emergency Services (YES).

The majority of youth were between 13 and 16 years of age. Nearly all the youths served by the YES House programs have some type of history of significant behavior problems or are the recipient of abuse and neglect, he said.

About one-half of the youth in the shelters were referred from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and are in foster care, are under Child Protective Services for being abused or neglected, are awaiting placement or have not been able to maintain placement for behavioral reasons.

About one-fourth of the youngsters at the YES House shelters were referred by juvenile courts. "These are the RUTs offenders — runaways, ungovernable and truants," Dr. Evans said.

"Some kids were in a court-ordered diversion program as an alternative to entering the juvenile justice system."

The rest of the youngsters come from private placements. These are parents who voluntarily place their uncontrollable teenager in the shelter.

In terms of academic achievement, the Warparound Project team found that youngsters in the shelter had an average or below average intelligence and were, on average, two years behind in school. They had significant problems in reading and mathematics.

Most of the youngsters, 78 percent, came from a mix of foster, single-parent or one natural-parent homes. Only 22 percent of the youngsters came from traditional family structures involving both parents.

The second phase of the project was to develop a training manual for the YES House staff and then train the staff in ways to better manage the residents. Staff members taught residents social skills, such as how to take "no" for an answer and how to accept criticism.

This training resulted in a decrease in the number of runaways from the shelter programs and an increase of one to two points in the grade-point average of the residents.

The final phases involved working with the family as a whole.

To be eligible for family services, a resident had to meet two criteria — a family to work with and not currently in treatment from a therapist. Thirty percent of the residents had no family to work with, Dr. Evans said.

Parent training was expanded in a fourth phase in which social workers would visit the family home when the youngsters were home for the weekends for follow-up after release.

"This is a critical stage. Most therapy falls apart in the home," Dr. Evans said.

The final phase of the program involved case management. Social workers would remain in contact with the family and resident, helping them through housing, employment or school crises.

Of the 90 families Dr. Evans and his team worked with, 64 percent have been re-united. Of the youths that were not part of the Wraparound Project, only 30 percent were reunited with their families.

"By being part of our program, more than twice as many kids went home to their families," Dr. Evans said.

This project has been successful to the point that two additional shelters opening in the Omaha area will be adopting components of the program. Staff trained through the YES House have been hired to direct the new centers and are using training manuals created in the program.